Damon Davis, Negrophilia Series 2015.
About:
Negrophilia is a personal body of work about trauma and triumph. It started as a personal meditative and therapeutic tool for me to deal with the constant stress of what was happening in my hometown of St. Louis after the murder of Michael Brown and subsequent uprising. This work became snapshots of the images and feelings I was seeing in person and on social media. The idea of an obsessive, grotesque fascination with Black death that is in American culture. The intrusiveness of looking at Black people dying in real time and the effects on both the oppressor and the oppressed psyche.
“The use of state-sanctioned violence against people of color has historically functioned as a warning that death is a suitable consequence for assumed criminality, suspected or otherwise. With the advent of social media and citizen journalism, visuals of these deaths are immediately available and widely shared. While this documentation often serves to protect the individual at risk during both the incident and the ensuing legal process, its repetition maintains a traumatizing effect, especially on communities of color.
The intrusion of this reality on the psyche of oppressed people is central to Selections from Negrophilia, which features meditative, collaged mixed media works by Damon Davis. On exhibition for the first time, the works challenge a grotesque fascination with black death in American culture. Davis’ instinctual works serve as a therapeutic response to these seemingly endless and intentional acts of violence.”
